Tel.: +7 (495) 938 17 80;
Leninsky av. 32 a, 119991 Moscow, Russian Federation;
Full Professor (Philology), leading researcher of the Department of Ethnolinguistics and Folklore of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Kabakova G.: e-mail: galina.kabakova@paris-sorbonne.fr
Tel.: +33 014 3184164;
Bd. Malesherbes 108, 75850 Paris, France;
Full Professor (Philology), associate professor of the Department of Slavic Studies of Sorbonne University.
The article analyzes the main stages of the study of folk etiology in European folklore, the reflection of the etiological plots in the folklore indexes, the peculiarities of national corpus of etiological stories. The case of studying Russian etiological tales and legends presents the main areas of work within the framework of the international project on the compilation of the encyclopedia of European folklore etiological plots and motifs. The project, which involves scholars from nine countries (France, Spain, Russia, Belarus,, Ukraine, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Bulgaria), aims to create a database of the etiological motifs of European folklore, and prepare a few regional indexes (primarily from Eastern European regions) to be included into encyclopedic compendium, which gives an idea of the structure and peculiarities of “folk etiology” in the European folklore. The characteristic feature of folk etiological stories is that they continue to prevail in modern folklore, preserving archaic themes and motifs on the one hand, and reflecting the realities of the new time on the other. Samples of fairy tales and legends from different regions of Russia and Russian enclaves of Baltic region allow us to estimate the universal themes and motifs, and regional versions that reflect local specificity of nature and life, and the influence of folk traditions of ethnic neighbours. Comparative analysis of the etiological texts of different national traditions, the creation of a common compendium and separate story-motif indexes can increase our knowledge about how folklore-mythological consciousness cognizes the world, how different cultures form their own “national” worldview, and how in the course of intercultural dialogue the folklore traditions enrich each other.
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